


Dehiscence

by veritascara



Series: Ad Astra [5]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Conflict, F/M, Family Issues, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Nausea, Parent-Child Relationship, Pregnancy, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2019-06-20 06:06:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15527778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veritascara/pseuds/veritascara
Summary: An unexpected holo-call reopens wounds, both new and old, for Hera and creates a rift she never intended.





	Dehiscence

**Author's Note:**

> My eternal gratitude as always to [Anoray](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anoray/pseuds/Anoray) and [uhura_ismylastname](https://archiveofourown.org/users/uhura_ismylastname/pseuds/uhura_ismylastname) for being my amazing betas. <3
> 
> Many thanks to all of you who continue reading along with this series, and to anyone new as well! This is part five of what will likely be nine total stories, and I had a lot of fun writing it. Too much, probably. 
> 
> Also, I'm sorry. In advance.

_Dehiscence (n.) - The bursting, rupture, or splitting open of a wound. Often used of a surgical wound which has failed to heal normally and which breaks down under internal pressure._

* * *

Hera’s vision blurred and the words on the page swam together in front of her eyes as she opened the 28th application for the civilian air defense team. _Nia Vandas, Age 16_ —at least that’s what the document claimed, the girl’s photo was not particularly convincing— _born on Lothal, mother lost two years ago in an imperial factory “accident_.” And now another kid eager to volunteer to fight the Empire. And fly, of course. It was all too familiar a story.

It might as well have been her story.

And just like she had, this young girl would fight and fly too.

Hera sighed and set the datapad down, turning away from the applications and back to their resources, lists of the few old private ships and undamaged Imperial craft they’d been able to piece together into a makeshift, miniature navy. Now it was up to her to try to teach some of these kids to fly and maintain a meager defense of their world.

And she only had three more weeks to do it before she’d promised to finally return to Yavin.

She really didn’t feel ready to go back.

Nausea welled up in her belly again, and Hera dropped her head to her hands, breathing in slow, steady breaths to try to will it away.

“More tea for you, General,” a welcome voice behind her said.

Hera lifted her head to look at the newcomer. “Just in time. Thank you, Rex.” She gratefully took the mug from his hands, removed the lid, and inhaled a long breath before blowing the steam away. The acrid smell of the sourroot tea made her wrinkle her nose, and its taste was even less appealing at the moment, but she began to sip slowly regardless and wait for it to work its magic.

“And I’ve brought you something else, sir.”

“Hmm?” she said, peering over her cup.

“Chopper commed and said you have an incoming call on a secure channel. Not emergent, but they insisted that you to come to the ship.”

Hera grimaced. She understood why Rebel Command insisted on only using her secure channel, but the Ghost was parked a full three city blocks away from the current building Ryder had chosen as interim government headquarters. “Why didn’t Chopp comm me directly?”

“Well, that is what I brought you.” Rex opened his hand to reveal a comlink in his palm—her comlink—and Hera groaned. She grabbed it without another word, wondering where she had left it this time, and stood up to go. Another rush of nausea poured over her with the movement, and she quickly swallowed a sip of tea to combat it.

Rex stepped closer and gestured towards her. “Will you be all right, sir? I can escort you if you need.”

Hera straightened her back and neck and looked at Rex. “No need. I know you’ve got combat training to get to.”

Rex looked at her and nodded, a carefully concealed sadness in his eyes.

Sometimes that painful camaraderie was just too much. Hera turned away, unable to contend with that at the moment.

Quickly, she shoved her datapad in her pocket and scooped up her tea. Confident her stomach felt at ease enough to move forward, she left the small office before either could say another word.

“Kriff,” she swore when she reached the building’s courtyard. Every one of the landspeeders had already been taken on some other errand; only a single speeder bike was left.

 _Three blocks to the Ghost_ , Hera thought. And that was three blocks farther than she had energy to walk right now. Maybe the bike would be fine . . . but then her stomach churned again, this time a pang of cramping accompanying the nausea. Her eyes flicked to her tea in her hand—the very necessary tea she couldn’t afford to leave behind. No, she just couldn’t stomach that kind of ride right now. And besides, she glanced down at her stomach momentarily, she still didn’t know if speeder bike rides were really safe for _it_ or not. She would have to walk.

Hera began trudging towards the street and lifted her comm to her mouth. “Chopp?”

The droid immediately returned her call with a query of his own, complaining that he’d been waiting to hear from her for ten minutes already.

“I know. I know. I’m on my way. I’ll be there in ten.”

The droid squawked his annoyance.

“Yes, I know they’ve been waiting. I don’t have transport. I have to walk,” she groused back at him.

Chopper’s grumbled reply irked her even more.

“Fine. Nine minutes. Time me.” Hera increased her pace.

She’d only made it a block and a half when the fatigue that lately hung about her like a heavy blanket began to feel as if it were weighted down at the corners with lead. Her feet dragged, and the midday sun scorched her skin under all her layers. A couple passersby eyed her with concern but said nothing, probably rightly reading the determined look on her face. But the more Hera tried to press herself forward, the more her body rebelled, forcing her to come to stop well before the next street corner, as the pain in her midsection grew stronger than she’d remembered feeling it in the past week. As antsy as she was to return to the ship, nothing good would come of showing up for a conversation with High Command in this state.

A cool breeze fluttered across her face, and the pain eased. Hera moved on again, this time at a slower pace. She forced herself to look at the world around her—at the Ithorian selling handmade baskets, at two young human women giggling together over scarves, at dozens of people milling about in the streets, only a few casting wary glances around them as the fears of their years-long occupation fell from their minds and freedom again became routine.

How quickly life changed.

She continued steadily forward, reaching the final block to her ship, when a child’s angry shouting caught her ears. Her heart pounded at the sound and she hurried around the corner, only to stop dead in her tracks at the sight she found there.

Two young children, a Rodian girl and a human boy, maybe five or six years old, knelt in the dirt in the center of the street playing brakkles, each exclaiming loudly over their losses and triumphs as they tossed their tiny wooden balls and sticks. The girl had just lost five sticks to the boy and berated him with childish indignation.

_Nothing was wrong, it was just kids. Kids . . . playing._

Hera forced her breathing to slow, and tried to soothe the renewed churning of her stomach with more tea. When it settled again, she dared to open her eyes and watch the scene before her, so foreign in its ordinariness and simplicity that she could hardly comprehend it but felt riveted to it just the same.

Two younglings fearlessly playing a game in the street, just as children should be.

She’d hardly known a life like that herself—certainly couldn’t remember more than glimpses and feelings of it. Would her own child be able to grow up with a life like that?

Her hand drifted to her belly as she pondered the question, only to feel her uneasiness return when she realized four small eyes were fixed on her, flickers of fear glimmering in their depths.

“Go on,” Hera said, offering the warmest smile she could muster and waving her hand at the toys at their knees. Still, the children stared at her, and she quickly moved on, keeping a wide berth between herself and their game. Relief flooded her when she heard them resume playing, although their voices were more subdued than before, and her heart twisted in her chest.

They might be technically free, but the lingering fears of past bondage were not so easily loosed. Not for these kids, nor for herself either.

Hera sighed and continued her trudging. As the rush of adrenaline wore away, the fatigue that had plagued her before returned, making the last hundred meters to the ship feel like miles, and the ladder to the main deck a nearly insurmountable cliff to climb.

 _Wah-wup-oh-wup-ahhh_ , Chopper grumbled when he finally saw her enter.

“Yes, I know that was more than nine minutes,” Hera retorted, glancing at her chrono and wincing when she realized it had been a full fourteen. “I’ll be in my cabin.”

Chopper continued his rant about how long he’d had to wait, and how impatient the caller—a he, she gathered—was being, but Hera had tolerance for none of it and shut the door to her cabin behind her. Surely, whatever General Dodonna or Senator Organa needed was urgent, if they’d called her out here and waited all this time, and she wasn’t about to waste more of their time listening to the droid’s griping.

In the dim room, fatigue threatened to overcome Hera fully, and she gazed longingly at the bunk above her, the homey curtains, the soft new pillows Zeb had insisted on purchasing for her with his own savings. Hera didn’t know how she was going to have the energy to stand for an entire call, and her stomach churned at the prospect. She braced herself against her work table and fought to take slow, measured breaths, interspersed with more sips of tea.

Finally satisfied that she could project an aura of calm leadership well enough for a few minutes, Hera stood straight, plastered a neutral expression on her face, and hit the receiver before she could be tempted to let her resolve crumble any further.

Her facade faltered immediately at the sight of familiar orange lekku that greeted her.

“Father!”

Cham turned towards her and his familiar face, lips initially pursed with annoyance, brightened at the sound of her voice. “There you are, my daughter. I hear congratulations are in order!”

Hera’s eyes widened farther, and she gaped at her father as a deep pit opened up in her stomach. Her grip on the mug in her hand tightened until her fingertips went pale.

_Congratulations?_

Her mind spun in a thousand directions all at once. How could he possibly know already? It had been months since their last conversation. Only those closest to her were aware, and she’d only told most of them because the incessant vomiting had hit her so strong and so quickly that she’d been forced to give an explanation. His spy network couldn’t be _that_ good. Had someone reached out to him? But most of all, why did he look so kriffing happy about it, given the circumstances?

“W-what?” she finally stammered out, scrambling to rein in at least the appearance of shock.

Confusion clouded Cham’s face at her question. Clearly, he’d been expecting a different reaction. “Congratulations for your victory on Lothal, of course!” he clarified. “The Empire has tried to hide the shame of their defeat, but they have not succeeded, and the news is being whispered even in the furthest reaches of the Outer Rim.”

“Oh,” Hera replied, her tension easing somewhat at the revelation. He’d heard something about the liberation of Lothal. But how much she didn’t know. “Thank you,” she added, trying to imbue her words with as much sincerity as she could muster. This wasn’t really a subject she felt prepared to talk about, either.

Cham seemed placated by her reply and continued on, “Your victory has inspired more of our own people. Free Ryloth continues to grow stronger, and we look forward to the day when we may say the same of our own world.”

“Yes, I am glad to hear it,” Hera replied, sipping more of her tea, grimacing at the sour taste again. She found herself longing to be able to sweeten it with miel—if only the stickiness of it didn’t make her gag and vomit even more.

“Now that you have tasted the freedom of one planet, certainly you are hoping to achieve more,” he added.

Hera fought the urge to roll her eyes. Of course he would bring this up again _now._ She refused to take the bait. “I am, but the galaxy needs the rebellion everywhere.”

“We could use your help, Hera,” Cham narrowed his eyes at her as he spoke. “Your experience freeing Lothal would be invaluable to Ryloth.”

“Rebel Command tasked us with destroying the Tie Defender factory on Lothal. Freeing the planet was Ezra’s prerogative, not mine,” Hera said cooly, focusing her gaze anywhere but on the brown, holographic eyes trying to see straight through her. “I have to return to base once the planet is stabilized and I am no longer needed here.” She paused for a moment to stop the flow of uncharitable statements that suddenly threatened to boil over at her father’s insistence. “I am a general now and cannot abandon my post.”

Cham’s brow lifted in surprise. “That is most excellent, my daughter,” he offered with genuine warmth, and Hera let her father’s approval, however brief, wash over her with gratitude until he continued his entreaty, his next words falling like a bucket of icy water dumped over her head. “But as a general, you now hold the ability to influence the direction of the whole rebellion. And you would help the boy free his homeworld while not attending your own?”

And there it was.

Hera’s legs wobbled underneath her, and she glanced down at the floor, wishing she could simply lay down and sleep and forget this whole nightmare was happening. She felt like a kid again, a kid whose actions were never quite good enough, never quite what her father wanted, even when she’d given everything she had to give.

But he had no idea—none at all of what had really happened on Lothal. All he knew were the whispers and echoes of rumors spread from one Outer Rim world’s seedy cantina to the next.

And the more time and conversation passed, the more the words she really needed to say stuck in her throat, only the meaningless ones making their way out. “We did what we had to do.”

“Then help us do what we must do! Tarkin has imposed new sanctions on Ryloth, and Governor Mors follows them to the letter. People are suffering,” he entreated. “We need your help, Hera. We need your team.”

 _We need the Jedi_ , Hera heard veiled behind the words of his plea.

She bit her lip, fighting the sudden flood of angry tears as they welled up inside her chest. “I can’t be the help you need,” she said, her voice soft, but dangerous. “I don’t have a team . . . not anymore.”

Cham’s eyes narrowed to scrutinize her. “Where have they gone?”

For a single moment, Hera was tempted to simply end the conversation, but she knew that would only make things worse. Far worse. Her father wouldn’t rest until he had answers. But how could she get these things out? How could she put into words the dual devastation that had stolen nearly all the light from her life, and maybe would have eventually had she not possessed one tiny spark of hope growing in her belly to illuminate her path going forward? Anger at her father’s careless words, at the way he threw around his requests like they were nothing, simmered within her.

She steeled herself, standing to her full height, and set her jaw. “Ezra is lost. Somewhere in space. Probably dead for all we know. The last we saw he was on Thrawn’s crippled star destroyer—launched into hyperspace by purrgil,” she told him first, the minutely easier portion to get out. “And Kanan . . .”

Cham’s image froze, and he stared at Hera, silently waiting for her continue.

“Kanan is dead, Father. I’d been captured by the Empire in the first attempt to destroy the factory. He died saving–” Hera’s voice cracked, and she swallowed hard, forcing herself to get the words out, “–saving _us_ . . .”

Hera let her lips linger on that last word.

For a full minute Cham said nothing. Hera watched his expression shift through a half dozen different emotions until her vision blurred with all the collective tears she’d been holding back. She wiped at her eyes, fearing that if she blinked, the resulting flash flood might drown her. And once it started, it might never stop.

 _Damn all these human hormones coursing through her system_.

As if in response to that thought, her stomach churned again, and she hastily turned her attention to the mug in her hand, frowning into it when she realized she’d already drained every drop of the precious, vile liquid. _Kriffing hell._ She set it on the table in front of her and hugged her arms around her chest, daring a look back up at her father.

His face was guarded, but the anguish in his eyes was all too familiar. “Tell me what happened.”

The words came slowly at first, and Hera found herself stumbling through a story she wished she’d never have to relive.

_Their return to Lothal to investigate. Sabine and Ezra’s theft of the Tie Defender’s data and hyperdrive. Her hurried escape back to Rebel Command with the flight recorder and promotion to general to lead the fight back to destroy the factory._

The story began pouring out of her faster and faster as the images blazed in her head, every moment seared indelibly into her mind—except maybe for the few minutes muddied by the truth serum’s fullest effect.

_Her crash and capture. The torture. Kanan’s rescue. Their flight. The fire. The fire._

_Fire._

Hera rubbed her eyes, wishing that she could scrub the images from her memory, while simultaneously clinging to that final glimpse of Kanan’s face.

“Oh, my daughter, this is something I never wished for you to experience.”

Hera opened her eyes and wondered when her cheeks had become so wet and why her chest hurt. Her father’s sorrowful face and drooping lekku mirrored her own.

“I know,” she whispered. She clenched her fists, willing herself to tell the rest of her half-told story, but the words stuck in her throat, except for a single statement—a challenge, perhaps: “I added Kanan to the kalikori. He rescued it too—before he found me.”

Cham startled at that, and Hera thought she caught a quick flash of disappointment cross his face—not unexpected, but still irksome. But he said nothing of it.

“Kanan was a good man.” He hesitated. “To lose your partner is one of the hardest kinds of loss. When I lost your mother, I thought at first that I had lost everything.”

The mention of her mother caught Hera’s attention. She could easily list on her fingers all the times he’d spoken of her in the last fifteen years, and her longing to know her mother better had only grown more acute as time had passed, especially lately.

“I might have made the plans, but she was the true heart of everything we did.”

Hera smiled weakly at his words, then Cham continued with conviction, shaking his fist in front of him, “I did not know what to do without her. But then I found my purpose again in the fight. The fight for freedom. And for justice for those we have lost.” He paused and looked at her, or maybe through her; she wasn’t really sure which. “You must also fight.”

Hera’s eyes flashed with sudden anger, and she fought to keep it in check—that lit match so close to dry kindling. He’d certainly thrown himself into the “fight,” all right, leaving her young self behind in the dust every time. But now she was the one on the other side of that decision, and she wanted none of it. Not for herself. Not for her child.

_But how could she tell him? If the revelation about the kalikori upset him, how would he take the news that his only daughter was pregnant by her now-deceased Jedi lover?_

The thought made her even sicker, and she eyed the bucket in the corner of her room, worried she might need it at any moment, but afraid to move a muscle lest she set it off unexpectedly.

“I am in no condition to fight. Not like that. Not the way you wish,” she said, layering the words with implied meaning and praying that he might catch something of it.

He didn’t.

“What do you mean? You are a Syndulla! It is what we do. Do you not always pride yourself on seeing the bigger picture? Why do you now wallow in the mire? Allow your grief to swallow you up?”

_Match to the kindling._

Hera’s anger flared bright at his tone-deaf reply. “Maybe I’ve learned that important details get lost in the big picture—personal ones. And maybe I learned it too late.” Her words dripped with regret.

“Don’t be a child again about this, Hera.” Cham responded with anger of his own.

_Kindling into fire._

“A child?” Hera gaped at him. What did he know about being a child?

In her mind, she was eleven, newly motherless and scared she might be fatherless, too, every night he failed to return home. She was thirteen, off to flight school, desperate to prove herself to the father she rarely saw. She was seventeen, running away from a home and father she felt she never could live up to towards a galaxy she was convinced needed her instead.

_Fire blazed into inferno._

“Twenty-one years of my life have been spent either watching the fight or fighting myself.” With every word, her voice slipped further into the old Ryl cadences she’d long trained herself to avoid. “We lost Jacen. We lost Mama. And I might as well have lost you after that for all that you were around while I was growing up—all those months at a time I spent not knowing where you were, or even if you were alive or dead, while I was shuffled from one moon to another.”

“Peace, Hera!”

“I will not have peace!” she continued on, clenching her fists at her sides as hot tears rolled down her cheeks. “Maybe you can distance yourself and throw yourself back into fighting that way, but I can’t. I will not abandon my–” Hera caught herself, “–family—just for the sake of fighting on like you did.”

“I did not abandon you, I fought _for_ you!” her father insisted.

“Did you really? Because it always felt like you fought for yourself. Like you fought to escape,” Hera spat.

She knew her accusation was unfair as soon as the words left her mouth, but her emotions buffeted her from every side—every childhood hurt that the small, lonely girl inside of her had internalized bursting out all at once like the flood that follows a breached dam. She crossed her arms and turned away, letting her lekku, stiffly arched behind her shoulders, say everything else.

Cham said nothing. Static crackled across their connection as the silence dragged on.

Hera exhaled slowly and turned back, quelling the flames and releasing her anger, but the damage had already been done. “I’m sorry. That was unfair.”

_Inferno to embers._

Her father nodded and lifted the ends of his lekku together against his chest in the sign of forgiveness, and when he spoke Hera could hear the brokenness in his voice, “I am sorry for the past, daughter. If I could take it back and give you what you needed, I would.”

Hera mimicked his motion to acknowledge her own silent forgiveness, but couldn’t bring herself to meet his eyes.

“But you have to keep on with the fight,” he entreated. “Maybe not with me . . . but you must keep on. We keep moving–”

“–it’s what leaders do,” Hera parroted the rest of the line she’d heard so often growing up, adding bitterly, “and I will.”

“Do you still have the Mandalorian girl with you? And the Lasat?” he questioned.

“Yes, _Sabine and Zeb_ are still here.”

“For them—you must lead them, and be strong for them.”

If she’d had any energy left at all, Hera could have laughed at the absurdity of that statement. To be strong for Zeb, who treated her like a delicate clay vessel that might crack with the slightest jostling. Or Sabine, who’d enlisted herself as Hera’s personal assistant, scouring the holonet for all the best research she could find on human and hybrid pregnancies in her spare time. No, neither of them really needed her anymore. She needed them far more. Her anger evaporated, leaving only bitterness in its wake.

_Embers to ashes._

She could practically taste them in her mouth. No, that was the taste of rising bile as her stomach reflexively squeezed even tighter.

“I have to go,” Hera exclaimed, throwing her father one last quick glance of regret before slamming her hand on the button to end the call. She dove for the bucket in the corner just in time to catch the heaving of her stomach ejecting its meager contents over and over until it was emptied and then some.

When the retching finally ceased, she dropped from her knees to sit against the cabinets and drew them up to her chest, resting her head backwards as she tried to catch her breath.

A small metal piece laid itself upon her knee and she lifted her hand to cover it. When she’d gathered the strength to open her eyes again, she found Chopper standing in front of her, a rag and cup of water in his other manipulator. It no longer surprised her to find that he’d snuck in while she was occupied with the bucket.

“Thanks, buddy.” She smiled weakly and took his offerings with gratitude to wash the acid taste from her mouth and her lips.

 _Woo-wap-ooh-wah-wap_ , Chopper admonished, and Hera cringed, wondering how much of the conversation he’d heard. Probably everything. She hadn’t exactly been quiet.

“I know he meant well,” she said. And her father had. But meaning well was a far cry from actually being helpful.

Chopper warbled again, this time adding a disapproving look, however impossible that should be for a droid.

“No,” she confessed quietly, “I didn’t tell him.” Hera wrapped her arms around her middle and stared up at the ceiling. “I couldn’t.”

The droid made a small noise of sympathy followed by a note of encouragement, and Hera laid a hand on his dome. “I’m glad I have you.” Chopper moved closer to press himself against her side, and Hera leaned into him gratefully, letting her utter exhaustion consume her. She spared a glance upward, but her bunk seemed too high a climb to manage in her state.

She slumped a bit, and laid her head against Chopper’s strut, letting her eyes travel from one painted symbol on the ceiling and walls to the next and reading the wordless stories they told of a home she hadn’t really known in sixteen years, a culture at once both intimately familiar and dear and light years away from the rhythms of her daily life.

One hand on her belly, one hand limp on the floor, Hera closed her eyes. For a moment she was scared that the flames might appear behind her eyelids again, like they so often did. But this time they did not. Her father’s face came into view instead, his disappointment, his anger, his sorrow all plainly written upon it.

 _You must also fight,_ she heard him say again.

The bitter, metallic taste returned in her mouth, and a smoldering coal in her heart flared bright, searing all the wounds that had just been flayed open. Of _course_ she would fight. She always fought. The difference now she was that she had to fight, not just for a hypothetical future, but a terrifyingly vulnerable, tangible one.

But she wouldn’t, _couldn’t_ do it his way. And he wouldn’t understand why.

Inhaling deeply, she expelled Cham’s image from her mind and willed another to take its place.

_Two small children playing brakkles in the street._

This time, when they looked up, she saw only curiosity on their faces, a wide-eyed innocence she couldn’t remember knowing herself—all their fear dissipated into the past, or perhaps never instilled in the first place. Then their forms began changing, skin shifting through a rainbow of hues, with lekku of all lengths and shapes on their heads, or sometimes none at all. Now this one had hair, and that one had Kanan’s eyes. This one was green-skinned like her, that one brown like its father.

Any one of them could be hers.

She clutched at that future, gasping when her wounds stung and burned with the effort. But she was determined to succeed anyways.

And she held on tight.

**Author's Note:**

> P.S. I did say I was sorry! But I promise things will start looking up for Hera from here on out. The next story will see her finally returning to Yavin and making some decisions about what her future will look like. 
> 
> Stay tuned, and you can follow me on [tumblr](http://veritascara.tumblr.com/) for updates!


End file.
